Chapter 14

I knew how I wanted to respond to her question. There was just one little problem. I was unable to do anything. I was rooted in place, unable to move, even my jaw refusing to work. I dumbly stared at her, not believing what I had heard.

Even then, Heather did nothing to indicate that I had upset her with my lack of reaction. She smiled at me warmly. She accepted me the way I was; completely.

Me? I lay there feeling disgusted with myself. It was like a war going on in my head. Everything was spinning too fast for me to follow any of my thoughts. I remember asking myself if it was alright for me to do this with Heather, or if my first time should not be with Sarah, the love of my life. As fast as it was there, it was gone again.

If it had not been for Heather, we probably would have spent the rest of our lives lying next to each other and staring into the other’s eyes.

She waited several minutes for me to say or do something. When nothing happened, she had to have decided to take matters into her own hands. Heather got up from her bed, extended her hand to me, and after I took it, pulled me to my feet. We stood next to her bed. My mind was blank.

Heather took hold of both of my hands. Looking deeply into my eyes, she spoke silently. “I cannot even begin to tell you how much you have done for me over the last few days. Deep inside, I was convinced that I would never again feel the need to be near to a guy. Every time Daddy came to me at night, my dislike of men grew stronger. Even in school, it became harder to allow boys to be near me. They disgusted me. It wasn’t helping that nearly all of them were trying to hit on me all the time.”

There was a pause, as Heather tried to compose herself. I could see the unshed tears in the corners of her eyes. This was hard for her, but I saw that she needed to tell me all of this.

“When I was a little girl, I dreamed of marrying my Prince Charming, having four kids and living happily ever after. Those dreams died little by little each time he touched me. In the end, the image of Prince Charming, that I had conjured in my dreams, was repulsive to me. I hate him for destroying my dreams. I hate him.”

By then, Heather was sobbing. I drew her into my arms and held her. There was nothing I could do or say that would take away her pain. All I could do was hold her and let her pain bleed out of her with her tears.

Her voice was muffled, but I could still understand her. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to have all those hormones in your body that cause you to get horny over boys, to have to listen to all the other girls telling you about their boyfriends and what they are doing with them and not being able to do anything about it. I couldn’t tell them to shut up. I couldn’t avoid the boys at school. All of them constantly reminded me of my lost dreams. Every time I got excited over a boy, I was more disgusted with myself. How could I react that way? I began harming myself. Nothing big that would leave visible marks or anything like that. I have a needle in my school bag. I just have to pull it out and I can cause me some pain without anyone noticing. Have you ever tried sticking a needle under a fingernail? It won’t leave a mark, but done right can inflict a lot of pain. At some point, the pain began to feel good. How twisted is that? I started to use the needle more often, not just to battle my hormones. There were times when it seemed that I couldn’t stop. The pain was just not enough anymore. The physical pain simply could no longer override the emotional pain. At first, I thought about switching to razorblades or something like that. But I guess I was just too vain to damage my skin permanently. I have seen pictures of people who cut themselves. There are even girls cutting their tits and pussies. Those scars just gross me out. That’s when I thought about killing myself for the first time. When I was lying in bed at night, unable to sleep after he left my room, with nothing to distract me from reality, that was the time when I couldn’t escape my thoughts anymore, countless hours of lying awake. What happened in my head was even worse than the real thing. I was the victim. Why was I feeling ashamed and guilty? The constant questions what I had done wrong, what I could have done differently. Was I too pretty? Was I dressing too sexily? Was I teasing him? Although rationally I knew all the time that I was not to blame, that I was the innocent victim, like Harmony had been before me, I could not stop those thoughts. Killing myself seemed to be the only way to escape all of that.”

Through her speech, Heather got more and more emotional. In the end, she was crying openly and it was, once again, my task to hold and comfort her. Despite everything else, it seemed that I was at least able to do one thing right. It seemed that she wanted to crawl into my body. After some time she finally calmed down enough to continue.

“And then you stepped into my life. That day in school, you shook me to my core. I had to find out what you knew and how you knew. There was something in your eyes, in your expression, like you knew my pain. Fuck, I can’t explain it properly. But it was like a compulsion, the longer I thought about you and what you had said and what it could mean, I just had to learn more about you. Then you just swept me away. The more time I spent talking to you, the more difficult it got to leave again. I was drawn to you like a moth to the flame, but you didn’t burn me. Just the opposite. Being in your arms calmed me down, soothed my pain and enabled me to forget, at least for the time we were together. Being with you worked much better than hurting me. At first, I had no idea what that meant. It was Sarah that pointed it out to me that I was falling in love with you. You are simply an overall beautiful human being on the inside. You have a level of compassion that is rare. Learning about your love for your sister and how you handled that just convinced me more that you were, that you are and always will be, one in a million. I can’t let you go. I love you. I am in love with you. You are my Prince Charming, my knight in shining armor, my savior, my life, my everything. Maybe all of that sounds kind of melodramatic. I don’t care. You gave me hope, real hope, for the first time since Harmony left for college. That you and Sarah are even willing to try to help me means so much to me. So much has happened over the last few days. I expected to be dead by now. You changed everything for me. You are the reason that I am still here. You are the reason that I’m looking into the future and see something worth looking forward to. Only you.”